The Competitive Balance Lottery for the 2015 MLB Draft took place this afternoon. Twelve competitive balance picks are awarded, with the first six taking place after the first round’s conclusion and the next six taking place following conclusion of the second round. Here are the results, per MLB.com (Twitter links)…
Competitive Balance Round A
- Marlins
- Rockies
- Cardinals
- Brewers
- Padres
- Indians
Competitive Balance Round B
- Reds
- Athletics
- Mariners
- Twins
- Orioles
- Diamondbacks
As MLB.com’s Jim Callis explained earlier in the week, teams that have one of the 10 smallest markets or one of the 10 smallest revenue pools are eligible to receive a compensatory pick between the first and second rounds (Round A) or between the second and third rounds (Round B).
The A’s, Diamondbacks, Indians, Marlins, Orioles, Padres, Pirates, Rays, Reds, Rockies and Royals were eligible for Comp Round A picks. The teams that didn’t receive an extra pick from that pool were placed into a second pool that also included the Mariners and Twins to determine which would receive a Comp Round B selection. These picks are eligible to be traded any time during the regular season, right up until 5pm ET on the day of next year’s draft.
The Cardinals get a Round A pick?
They seem to get one every year. It continually baffles me how a team that constantly is in the playoffs, and is in the top 5 in attendance continually gets a “competitive balance” selection. The system is broken.
St Louis has never gotten a Competitive Balance Round A pick before now.
Though they usually are in the top 10 in Winning % each year, and have the 13th highest payroll in MLB, their actual market size is considered smaller.
I’m a Cardinals fan I still don’t get it…
I’m a baseball fan and I don’t get it either.
Thanks for the explanation. I just think of the large fan base and not the actual market size.
It seems like they have a huge territory in the middle of the country. Obviously MLB measures it in some other way.
Kansas City is only four hours away. Chicago is five hours, Atlanta is 8 hours. Its sparse and rather poor in some of those pockets down there. Although baseball is religion in St Louis they make the cut due to market size largely because of where Kansas City and Chicago are located. I would rather see the Royals have that pick but that’s not how the CBA was necessarily negotiated.
Correct. Any “competitive balance” system that awards picks to the Cards and not the Pirates is flawed.
It’s a lottery, the Pirates were eligible but lost out. The Cardinals fall in to the upper end of the “market size.” portion of the draft and lucked out. That being said perhaps one thing that could be done as far as the Lottery is putting “2 ping pong balls”in for teams that fit both the smallest market size, and lowest revenue team. Throw out the second lottery ball if a team comes up with a pick in round A but weight their chances of getting a higher pick stronger. Taking away incentives from a team that is doing well In spite of small market size is a bad idea.
Market size is based on the population of the area in and around the city.
Still not fair to teams who are worse off
$$$$$$$$$$ <— there is your explanation.
Instead you could have organizations spending in the top half forfeit competitives.
It would fix the whole Cardinals draft nonsense.
what does this mean…. man I love Baseball but sometimes things can get so confusing at times..
There’s a really good article that gives you an overview right above these comments that you rushed to.
So the Cards get a pick, but the Rays don’t? Seems legit. This systems is broken, and needs to be fixed.
I can’t stand the Rays and even I think this is nonsense. The market/revenue disparity between the Rays and the Cardinals is probably just as big as between the Cardinals and a lot of other ineligible teams.
But apparently the Rays aren’t one of the 10 lowest revenue teams or they would have gotten a pick.
In fact, they must not even get revenue sharing or they would have gotten a pick in the 2nd round like the Twins and Mariners.
The Rays’ local TV deal must be bigger than I assumed — that’s the only thing that I can think would account for it. The Rays look like they are the 12th smallest TV market (so that doesn’t get them in) but if their revenues are really low, they should have been in.
Not all eligible teams got picks. The Rays just lost the lottery.
I guess the you missed the part were it said the Athletics, Brewers, Cardinals, D-backs, Indians, Marlins, Orioles, Padres, Pirates, Rays, Reds, Rockies and Royals were all eligible for a round A pick.
Well, duh. That should have taught me to look at the Callis article and not what is written here.
So there were 13 teams in the first round — 6 of whom got picks. Then in the 2nd round there were the remaining 7 plus the Twins are Mariners. And 6 of them got picks.
So the Royals, Pirates and Rays are all losers in the lottery.
It is written here though. Heck, the title of the article has “Lottery” in it.
Actually, there was a typo in that article, and you DIDN’T say the Brewers were eligible. They appeared on the list, but your quote of yourself is wrong.
In three years of the competitive balance picks, the Rays have added one second round pick, while teams like the Cards and Tigers have added first rounders.
I’m guessing Cardinals is actually the Rays?
Should be but isn’t. Cardinals got one this year too.
Cardinals always get one because they are consider “small Market” for some reason. If even though I have to hear every day how amazing everything is about them
Chill man, you know the cubs will have the best offensive club in 2-4 years.
I am chill and yes we will I hope, but I just dont get how you guys are considered “small market” I mean come on, you guys got the best and biggest fan base in the world? right lol
Ha no I agree, I don’t see how it works. At the most maybe Round B, but the 3rd in round A? It’s a little more than unfair.
Just being honest as a Cub fan, of course I dont want you having another pick up there because yes you guys draft really good usually. I say over the last 4 years the Cubs and Cardinals been the better drafters
D’backs just can’t catch a break, can they? (I mean I guess they did better than the Rays.)
At least we got one :-/
Kick’em while they’re down, right?
Nope. I mean, it is a blind draw, but luck is just against them. One would think karmic balance would have at least landed them in Round A.
You got that right
I don’t get how the Orioles get a pick when they are holding the Nationals hostage with their tv deal with MASN. Baltimore is a pretty large market, to include Maryland, DC, and Virginia at least.
I don’t get how the O’s are in this lottery but the Nats aren’t. They’re basically neighbors, so do the Nationals (who have only been in DC for like 11 years) have that much bigger of a market?
The population of Baltimore is about 621,000 and DC 631,000 (both estimates) for 26th and 24th largest cites in the US. But the metro area for DC is 5.5 million and B’More is 2.8 million. That’s 9th and 20th. And that’s the gap in markets. Combined they’d be 4th. I know that doesn’t represent the actual TV market but just an idea of what the difference is. Baltimore’s market is hurt being sandwiched in between Philly and DC.
I don’t think the TV deal has anything to do with this. I guess they just use the Baltimore metro area to decide market.
MLB uses the DMAs determined by Nielsen to determine market size. Market Size and Television Territories are two different things entirely.
But the Orioles market is actually the eleventh smallest in MLB. They get an entry into the Competitive Balance Lottery because their revenue is bottom ten.
JB_Iowa. Your comment is in moderation and therefore I can’t reply to it. I may be wrong about the DMA part. But the CBA (attachment 26) states the size of each market and it has the Os 11th.
No pick for the Pirates. I guess MLB is still punishing them for drafting Josh Bell.
“The A’s, Diamondbacks, Indians, Marlins, Orioles, Padres, Pirates, Rays, Reds, Rockies and Royals were eligible for Comp Round A picks.”
So how to the Cards nab a round A pick?
Rigging
Or the Brewers, for that matter? 😛 I’m guessing that list is a bit lacking.
Must be, I just looked at the linked article and it lists Athletics, Brewers, Cardinals, D-backs, Indians, Marlins, Orioles, Padres, Pirates, Rays, Reds, Rockies and Royals as eligible teams.
No way do the Marlins keep that pick. It’s as good as sold for straight-cash, homie.
Cubs will take it. You can have Barney
I think the Marlins know it’s worth more than a replacement-level DFA’ed player.
But they will turn that cash into a valuable commodity like Kevin Gregg
Are the full rankings by each criterion available? It’d be interesting to see which teams were close by each metric.
What really bugs me is that teams like KC and Pittsburgh get screwed out of a COMPETITIVE round pick. This draft should only be for teams who truly are crippled by big payroll clubs and unfair TV contracts. It’s not good for baseball when lower clubs don’t even get the breaks that were set up for them. And you wonder why NFL and NBA have taken over in popularity…
Hey y’all it’s shaniqua how are y’alls doing today. This is a crazy news
Yet one more reason MLB is truly broken and in need of either a overhaul or a continued march to obsolescence.
But wait i thought the nationals market was the O’s as well, they certainly get the TV revenue from the nats but they deserve an extra pick…smh
Competitive Balance draft pick, what a joke…
I guess it works because almost half of those teams are in 1st or 2nd place in their division. As such I think they shouldn’t get a competitive balance pick – it’s already balanced competitively.
But why use logic?
Any team in the majors can trade for these picks correct?
It’s a great system.
In 2005, the world champion Red Sox, with the game’s 2nd highest payroll, got 5 first-round picks, even though they signed a pricey free agent.
This system is better.
Yeah, that’s because they lost guys like Pedro, Lowe, Orlando Cabrera, etc…they weren’t just handed picks like you seem to imply. I don’t get a system where a team that made it to the WS just last year gets a “competitive” balance pick….seems to me they don’t need the help to be competitive. Preposterous system all around.
The Red Sox “lost” nothing. They gamed the old system. They can’t game this one.
They lost multiple Type A free agents, that is how they got those picks. And it has nothing to do with “gaming the system”, you lose good players to free agency and you get compensation. What is ridiculous is that a World Series team gets “competitive” balance picks over teams with the lowest and 3rd lowest payrolls respectively, as if they need the help. They essentially lose nothing, succeed mightily, and still get rewarded under the guise that they need the pick to remain competitive. I honestly do not understand how you can sit there and say it is a “great system” unless you are a Cardinals fan. They are an elite franchise being compensated under the guise that they need these picks to remain competitive (simply not the case).
They didn’t “lose” anything. They elected to let some free agents go and sign others.
The reason the compensatory pick system was created was to help teams that couldn’t afford to sign their own players. That has never applied to the Red Sox.
The point of both systems is that it is supposed to level the playing field against economic juggernauts like Boston, New York and Los Angeles. The old system wasn’t working because those teams would sign free agents to short, expensive contracts and reap extra picks when they left. Teams like Kansas City or Tampa couldn’t afford to do that. Go back and count the number of compensatory picks the small market teams got in the last 10 years of the system, compared to the Red Sox and Yankees.
No, I am not a Cardinals fan. You are oversimplifying the lottery. They got lucky. They are also the team that could not afford to resign Albert Pujols, while the Angels could afford him. I shed no tears for the Cardinals, a mid-market team, but they are not the Red Sox or Yankees financially and never will be.
And back to oversimplifying: Look at the other teams that got an extra draft pick. Now tell me this isn’t better than the Red Sox getting 5 picks.
A) They still give out compensation picks, no? So the Sox could conceivably still stockpile picks if they let guys like Lester walk.
B) The Cardinals are not a “small market team”. They are 13th in payroll. I don’t understand how they need competitive balance picks to even the playing field against economic juggernauts when they are on the fringes of the top 10 themselves.
C) AT BEST, this system is flawed. They need to do away with the lottery. This isn’t the NBA. The Rays and Pirates could actually use these picks. I don’t mind the actual idea behind this system, but only if the picks are applied to teams that actually need it. Just because the Cards are bottom 10 in revenue and are bad businessmen that aren’t capitalizing like other markets are (how are they bottom 10 with their payroll + fanbase…mind bottling) doesn’t mean they deserve picks. Especially seeing how wildly successful they have been.
And don’t get me wrong, the previous system had it’s flaws for being to lenient with handing out compensation picks for relatively mediocre players….but this system right now is also a joke.
The Cardinals aren’t bottom 10 in revenue. They are actually 5th in revenue, but they have the 9th smallest market so that is how they were able to qualify for this pick.
The terms “balance” and “lottery” should never be used in conjunction.
So the Rays and Pirates are the two teams shut out this year……..seems about right, the lowest and third lowest payrolls in MLB.
Royals, Rays, and Pirates don’t get a pick. Three of the ACTUAL smaller market teams. Smh
The cards had the 4th largest revenue in the MLB in 2013 (per Forbes) yet St. Louis is a small market…. No wonder economics never made sense to me.
It’s voodoo economics. I got to think if the Cardinals are in the lowest 10 teams in revenue -they or either terrible business men or they have two sets of books going.
It never said the Cardinals are one of the lowest 10 teams in revenue. Their TV contract is pretty bad, though. Less than $30MM per year.
Think of it this way. If the Cardinals are making the best of a small market and can be successful then shouldn’t MLB want to encourage that? Penalizing them for being a top five revenue team in a bottom five market would just hurt baseball.
Shouldn’t there be some secondary criteria as well like record or current payroll. Seattle signs Cano for $240 and they get extra picks. A’s win the division the last two years and have the best team in baseball and they get competitive balance picks?
The competitive balance system was never designed to compensate for record it is designed to compensate for financial market size. I would say it does a poor job doing that but record should never be part of it. If the Rays win the World Series the stands will still be empty and their revenue will still be small. I would go for a system based solely on revenue, lowest revenue team gets the #1 comp pick.
But they use win loss record from previous year to change the odds. That’s how the Rockies have added 2 firsts and a second and the Marlins have added 3 first rounders, while the Rays have added just one second rounder.
Exactly, the standard armature draft rounds already compensate for win-loss record. The comp pick should be about revenue size.
Woohoo, the Rockies will get the first overall pick and the second comp round pick.
how are the A’s a small market team but the Giants aren’t? same market right across the bridge
TV rights. Stadium.
Revenue. The A’s are the 5th lowest revenue team, while the Giants are the 3rd highest. According to Forbes, the difference is $129MM a year.
How do the Royals, Pirates, and Rays miss out on the competitive balance but the Cards end up with a pick. I live in KC and even here it feels like most baseball fans are Cardinal fans. This makes no sense at all.
So………….the Indians failed twice? Nothing new there. We’re used to failure. 🙁
What is crazy is that every NL Central team was up for a competitive pick except….
The Cubs.
System is broken.
They should just do away with the Competitive balance picks completely
I really dislike this system. Why should any team continuously get extra high picks every year? And, if you are worried about lower revenue teams, then give the picks to the bottom five teams in revenue, and not more. Then disqualify those teams from obtaining picks for the following year. What MLB is missing is that the more you cut the higher revenue teams off from picks in the top 50, the more likely they are to have to spend lots of money in the free agent market to fill a slot that they couldn’t get from drafting. If it’s just revenue that’s the issue, then tinker with the revenue sharing formula.
If any of these picks get traded, it will be interesting to see how they’re valued.
Earlier this year, the Marlins traded their round A compensation pick, #39 overall, to the Pirates for Bryan Morris. At the time, he was a 27 yo RP with a career 3.46 ERA, 5.03 FIP and 4.34 xFIP in 93.2 IP over 1.5 seasons. There were also rumors that the Marlins were discussing trading this pick to the A’s for Jim Johnson.
That puts the value of a round A comp pick at 4+ years of a below average MR with below replacement level peripherals or <1 year of a closer having a poor year. I wouldn't say these picks have all that much value.
This is the only instance I can think of where one of the picks were traded straight up for a player.
Thanks for that. It will be interesting to watch the value of these picks change from this ‘baseline’ going forward, since they’re a new commodity.
The Cardinals get the third pick in round A and the Rays get shut out of both rounds. I’m not a conspiracy guy but it almost seems like MLB is helping the Cards get Price. If he does go to St. Louis you can bet that comp pick will be involved. I know the system is the system but the Royals getting shut out and the Cards getting the pick seems kind of screwy.
As I posted above, that pick doesn’t have a lot of value. In any type of Price trade, it is probably the 4th or 5th most valuable piece involved on the Cards side.
I understand the value of say the 40th or 43rd pick in the draft. That being said teams like the Rays, Red Sox and Cardinals have drafting expertise and good player development systems and that helps make it more of a commodity. I never said it will be the Wacha, Miller, Rosenthal, Martinez center piece of the deal but my guess is the Rays covet the pick as part of the package. My point is that it’s a chip the Cardinals have and a chip the Rays would like for both drafting and slot money purposes.